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Showing posts from October, 2009

Birds on the Jack Pine Trail

We decided to take a walk this morning, we had been thinking about visiting the Valleyview Little Animal Farm, but my daughter seemed rather indifferent to it, so instead, we took a walk. We headed to the Jack Pine Trail, part of the Stoney Swamp greenspace in Ottawa (off Moodie between Hunt Club and Fallowfield). My wife had been here a time or two when we were dating, and I think we might have brought my daughter when she was much younger. The parking lot was packed, but we were still able to find space. I didn't realize that if you come here, you need to bring bird seed. (So, if you're going, now you know.) We came across the first of many bird feeders on the 2.5km loop, and I grabbed a small handful of what was left in the feeder and managed to get these pics. The path that meandered along was very level, although there were a few rocks and roots that would have made a stroller difficult to navigate. There are a number of raised wooden boardwalks to get you over muddy se

The day a strange package arrives, then the phone rings.

So, yesterday a package arrived for me. Which is interesting, because I wasn't expecting anything. It came to me from Cisco, a company I have absolutely no ties to. So, with the VP of Sales and Marketing looking over my shoulder (he happened to deliver it to me), I opened it up. And found this. A map of the world, with some major roads on it. Oh, and a sticky note with my name, and a customized url for me to visit. When I visited it, I found this. And about an 1/2 hour later, my phone rang. No, I don't work for an international company with multiple office locations. No, I'm not in the market to purchase a phone switch. No, I don't need web conferencing software. No, I'm not looking for unified telephony. I like the campaign, it worked really well in getting me to visit the site, but the targeting was poor. I have no idea where they got my name, phone number and company info, but a quick bit of research would show that my company is pretty small, and centere

Charity: Doing Christmas a little different this year...

So a conversation was started in my family this autumn, about Christmas, and gifts and such... It basically went this way. My Dad didn't want to have to ask us what we wanted for Christmas, any found it to be getting more and more expensive as we were gaining in significant others and children. So, he brought up the idea of making donations to charity in each others names instead of going out and buying each other gifts. Very quickly, my siblings and I all bought into it, as well as our significant others... We're still buying gifts for the children, after all there are only 2 at the moment, and the day will be more magical for them, but for the adults, only an exchange of a piece of paper, "A donation has been made on your behalf...". So, where does that leave us? Oh, yeah. Where to give? And how to pick the charity to give to? Some ideas have been tossed about, with all of them, once a charity has 'won' it is no longer eligable: each person picks one c

1st Cross Country Lotus User Group

So, yesterday we had the 1st Cross Country Lotus User Group meeting in Ottawa, Markham, Calgary and Montreal. For my part of the inital CCLUG, we met with David Clarke (Technical Manager - Canada & Caribean) in one of the IBM offices in Ottawa Ontario for our part of the 4 city and webcast CCLUG. Starting the 1st CCLUG is a presentation by Kevin Lynch presenting "Life of the Notes ID" on lowering the TCO of Notes/Domino wth ID Vault and the PKI infrastructure. New in 8.5.1 is the Windows single sign-on for Web Clients. Using the windows desktop password for your iNotes or web application login. Future feature will move the person documents and IDs out of Domino Directory and into LDAP or ActiveDirectory. ID Vault will simplify the provisioning of ID credentials. Uploads existing ID files to the vault. Streamlines the process for resetting lost passwords. Manages changes across multiple copies of Notes IDs. Provides 'Auditor' function to extract ID files for